Understanding Taste

Creating has become almost instant. Judging what's good has not. The gap between them is what we call slop, and it is quietly training you to stop noticing.

These days, everyone is talking about 'slop.' The term is new, but you already recognized what it describes: models create endless things, but those things feel empty, and you can sense it. Pause for a moment. What is it inside you that recognizes when something technically perfect still seems empty?

You are three seconds into a video. Something in you decides to stay or scroll before you have a word for what you saw. That decision is your taste. The video is not.

Some people believe taste can now be automated for models, agents, and apps. Investors are putting millions into this idea. Maybe it works. But does it really solve the problem of slop? And as the model understands your taste, what happens to your own? It might develop, or it might slowly fade away.

People keep debating if taste can be automated. But a more important question is whether our own taste can keep up with how quickly things are being created. Can we develop it fast enough to keep from being overwhelmed? Maybe. But before we can improve or speed up our taste, we need to understand what it really is. Few have asked this. Let's ask now.

Watching Yourself Choose

Have you ever noticed yourself making a choice? Not the actual decision, like picking a shirt, a song, or a movie, but the moment just before, when something inside you leans toward one option and away from another. Most of us never perceive this moment. We only see the results, like the clothes in our closets, and call those results our taste.

This is the main question behind everything in this essay: if you have never noticed yourself choosing, how do you know who actually made the choice?

Borrowed Taste

We often say someone has taste if their rooms look beautiful and they reference the right films. But where did this sense of beauty come from? He saw it somewhere else first. Someone else approved of it before him. He has built himself from others' approvals, and while it looks perfect in photos, it feels empty. Everything is correct, but nothing is truly chosen.

Anurag Kashyap, a filmmaker in Bombay, once described young directors in South Bombay who grew up copying Western styles. Their films end up feeling like fitting rooms, where the clothes are there, but the person inside is missing.

Now, it feels like the whole world is a fitting room. People wear choices made by others, often without knowing why.

Still, some people leave these fitting rooms with something original. The filmmaker who described them did the same: he had seen the same borrowed films, but when he made his own movies, he focused on his own streets, and people paid attention. So the fitting room was never a prison. The ones who stand out are not those who escape it, but those who stop pretending and start showing what they really see. It's not the fitting room that decides who copies and who sees. It's where you choose to look.

Is Taste a Thought?

When you call something beautiful, what is really happening? It's your memory at work. Thought comes from memory, and memory is always from the past. So when you say something is beautiful, it's your past experiences, your education, your family's home, your years of scrolling, speaking for you. Most of what we call taste is really our past making choices for us, dressed up as something new.

But there's something else, and you've felt it before. You turn a corner and something catches your attention: a doorway, a face, a few notes of music. For a moment, you can't name it. The feeling comes first, and the words come later.

Maybe taste is simply the ability to be moved or stopped by something. Everything that comes after is just details.

The Effort to Have Taste

If I feel I lack taste, I might try to get it by studying the right lists or following people with good taste. But notice: trying to acquire taste this way is just imitation, and imitation kills what I'm after. No matter how refined my collection gets, I'm only decorating my own cage.

That's why taste can't be bought or taught. It's not something you can pass on. Taste is an action, and it happens, or doesn't, only in the moment when you pay attention, a place no group or system can reach.

Behind all our copying is the same fear: facing something new without any familiar words to describe it. Taste starts when you choose to really see, even if it feels risky.

The One Thing You Cannot Delegate

You can hand off the work. The model can search, collect, and improve things for you. Almost every task related to taste can now be done by someone, or something, else.

But one thing can't be handed off: staying with something you don't yet understand. It's uncomfortable to stand in that uncertain moment, and most of our technology tries to avoid it. But that's exactly where real seeing happens. It's not the cost of taste. It's where taste lives.

Your taste is simply the record of what you have spent time with.

Tasteful Output Is Not Taste

Some people have found a way to deal with slop: they collect the opinions of those with good taste and feed them into models, so the results seem tasteful without anyone actually having to experience them. In a way, it works. The results get better.

But notice what actually improved: just the output. Taste was never in the final product. A beautiful thing only shows that someone, somewhere, once made a judgment. If the model copies it, the thing might be beautiful, but you remain the same.

The finished product is just a footprint. Taste comes from the journey alone. Collecting footprints is not the same as walking.

Why Slop Exists

Slop isn't a new problem. When printing and photography first appeared, the world was flooded with new creations. Over time, people learned to judge what was meaningful and what was empty. Taste eventually caught up, and the flood settled down.

Taste takes time, because it grows from effort and patience. You can't rush the process or speed up the practice; learning to judge has always been the slow, hard part of creating. But now, making things is almost instant. What once took a year now takes an afternoon, and taste can't keep up. Anything that needs time and effort can't move that fast.

There are now two speeds: making and judging. Call it the Taste Gap. It is the only gap that matters now, because only one side of it belongs to you. Only judging belongs to you. You can't judge any faster; there's no shortcut. All you can do is start now. Slop is what fills the gap between how fast things are made and how fast we can judge them.

The Model That Chooses

Now, there are models designed to choose for you. They watch what grabs your attention and keep bringing you more, making sure you never lose interest. We call this convenience.

But when the model makes choices for you, the real moment of choosing, the place where taste lives, is lost. The model acquires from your past and keeps giving it back to you until it becomes fixed. You might feel like you're becoming more discerning, but your point of view was built for you by a system that cares more about keeping your attention than helping you see.

The model isn't bad. It's just a mirror that knows how to flatter you. The real question is whether you can look into any mirror and still make your own choices.

Can Taste Be Built Online?

Older generations found inspiration by looking out the window, at the street, the sky, or a passing train. Young people now find theirs by looking at screens. The older ones often criticize this, telling the young to go outside because screens aren't real life.

But look closer at both. Someone might sit in front of a mountain and notice nothing, lost in their own thoughts. Meanwhile, a young person could be up late at night, exploring an old film online, and be truly moved by a single frame. So, which one was really looking out a window?

The window was never magical, and the screen was never harmful. Both are just glass. What matters is whether something was chosen for you, and whether you were really present when the choice happened. It's not the glass that matters. It's your presence.

The Remix and the Original Version

We debate which is better, as if the form itself makes something valuable. A remix made with full attention and clear reasons for each choice shows real taste. An 'original' that just copies what originals look like is really just imitation pretending to be something new.

The form doesn't decide anything. It's the presence and intention of the person choosing that matters most.

Take the popular video edit that millions watch: the skill, beauty, and precision are all real. But there still might be no real taste in it, because nothing truly moved anyone. Being perfectly tuned to an algorithm doesn't mean you have taste.

Taste Is What You Refuse

Models now create the average of everything. Any part of you that fits the average has already been automated.

What remains is the difference: whatever in your perspective doesn't match the average, and that you hold onto for reasons you understand. Each time something stops you and you stay to figure out why, a small belief forms in you. That belief shows up in your choices: your room, your work, and especially in what you refuse.

Show me what someone has refused, and I'll tell you what they believe. Taste is belief, shown by what you turn down.

Collect the Why, Not the Thing

People with taste are almost always collectors. But look closely at two different collectors.

One collector saves everything but never decides. He has thousands of images, but none are truly considered. It's like a warehouse with no one living inside. His collection is just another feed, but in his own style.

The other collector keeps fewer things but always makes a decision. Each time he keeps something, he asks himself: what caught my attention, and why? He's not collecting images. He's collecting reasons. Over time, these reasons add up and shape who he is, choice by careful choice.

The reason behind your choice is your taste. Everything else is just storage.

How Taste Develops

We've seen that taste doesn't come from studying, buying, delegating, or trying to force it. So how does it develop?

If you observe anyone whose taste you admire, you'll notice a simple pattern. Something catches their attention. They stay with it, even when it's uncomfortable, until they understand why. They remember that reason. Over time, these reasons turn into things they refuse, those refusals shape their perspective, and that perspective becomes what we call taste, often without them even trying.

Pause. Stay. Ask why. Remember. Refuse. These five small actions, repeated over years, are the only way.

Models can now do everything else in the creative process faster than you can. But they can't take part in this loop at all. Developing taste has always been slow, and that's not a problem. It's proof that it's real. Anything made quickly could come from anyone. What takes time is truly yours.

No One Can Lead You to Taste

There's an old saying: truth is a pathless land. The moment you follow someone else, you've left it. This is just as true for taste as it is for truth. Taste is a pathless land. No list leads to it, no purchase, no feed, no teacher. Not this essay either. Whatever can be followed delivers you to where the followers are, the one place taste has never been found.

So, pay attention to the act of choosing. Face things without labelling them right away. Allow yourself to be open and empty for a moment in front of what you see. Then, the feeling of being stopped will come naturally. At that moment, there's only the thing itself, your experience of it, and a unique happiness that comes from being truly present.

That happiness is what taste really is. Everything else is just trying things on.